


Underneath

by islasands



Series: Lambski [46]
Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: New love, Old fears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 21:59:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islasands/pseuds/islasands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once burned... twice shy. </p><p>I wrote this as a tribute to Adam Lambert's beautiful song, "Underneath". You might like to listen while you read.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Underneath

"Underneath"

  


Adam Lambert

  


He closed the door and stood with his back against it. Thank fuck he was gone. Thank fuck his bed was his own again.

He decided to shower. The sooner he could wash away the memory of how he had been touched and kissed and fucked - the better. But once he was inside the shower’s cubicle of solace he sank down and put his head on his knees. The water splattered on his head. He let it do this until the water ran cold. Then he dressed. He lay on his bed. He waited for the phone to ring. He turned it off so he couldn’t do that.

He slept and when he woke in the middle of the night he went into the kitchen and leant on the bench.

_our bed is an ocean  
_ _our ceiling a sky_

_I read the invitation in your eyes  
_ _but my lungs are filled with salty air  
_ _and when I breathe out my sigh is privately oceanic_

_invisible wreckage from the ships I have sailed  
_ _is scattered on the shores of our sheets  
_ _you don’t see this and I am afraid_

_but I think you are dear to me  
_ _in fact I already know you are this  
_ _I know it in the reluctance of my kiss_

_and in my failure to meet the loving inquiry in your gaze  
_ _which I wouldn’t regret if only your eyes were not so blue  
_ _so truthful. so deliberately gentle._

_yes, I read the invitation in your eyes  
_ _but all my men are standing at attention  
_ _and will not lay down their arms. They ignore my commands._

_I send signals of surrender to my mitochondria  
_ _but they refuse to fly them and warn me instead  
_ _flickering the lights of suspicion in all my cells_

_when I already know you are dear to me  
_ _yes. I already know you are this  
_ _I know it in the reluctance of my kiss_

_and in the strength that flows out of you into my arms  
_ _making me hold you against my own wish  
_ _and break into you like a wave_

_I think you are making me your own  
_ _you and your paper boat folded with such care  
_ _inviting me to share its improbability_

_of making our bed into an ocean  
_ _and our ceiling - a sky_

He filled a glass with water and drank. He wandered outside and stood on the deck. He set the glass on the railing. He looked out across the valley. There was no moon or stars and he realised it was drizzling. He smiled sympathetically at the drizzling rain. He liked noticing the halo it made of the outdoor lights and the lights shining down onto the pool. He liked the way it made his brain have a feeling of giving up. He began to cry and took up the glass of water so that he could drink and cry at the same time.

In his mind’s eye he was suddenly swept off his bearings right up into the sky, high enough up to look down at himself as a small creature, alone, alone in a house, alone in a city, alone in a country, alone on a planet. He felt compassion for that person. He looked at all the darkened houses and felt compassion for the creatures they contained. They too were alone. He came back into his body and wiped his eyes.

_our bed is an ocean  
_ _our ceiling a sky_

_thank fuck you are gone  
_ _and I can let the waves roll in and thrash the beach  
_ _in my heart. yes. thank fuck you are gone_

_I am too tired to love again. if you look inside my shell  
_ _you will find no living thing, nothing wet with life.  
_ _only a note of sadness if you hold me to your ear_

_but in your arms... on the black swell of an ocean at night  
_ _more than my sexual expression was shocked into life  
_ _I admit it but my confession is so bitter it ejaculates tears_

_yet I know you are dear to me  
_ _I already know you are this  
_ _I know it in the reluctance of my kiss_

It began to rain in earnest. He opened the doors and windows and stood for a moment, his arms on either side of the door, allowing the rain to strike his face. “Thank fuck he’s gone,” he said to the night, the rain, the world. He stayed there, head down, while the rain sprinkled on his hair.

_our bed is an ocean  
_ _our ceiling a sky_

_I kissed his shoulder and knew he was dear to me  
_ _I let him move inside me and I don’t do that. It’s a forbidden thing  
_ _but he is turning my refusals into reversals_

_with an importunity so luminous with hope I open up to him  
_ _but he does not hear the rollers coming in  
_ _in long sullen rows that are predestined and deafening..._

_yet I know he is dear to me  
_ _I already know he is this  
_ _I know it in the reluctance of my kiss_

He went to the side table next to his bed and turned his phone back on. He sat on the bed. He waited. Around him, unseen, his rules for self-preservation moved to and fro like sticks washed up on the pebbles of a shore.

He couldn’t sleep. A blue light was filling the room. The phone rang and he stared at it. He picked it up to identify the caller but he already knew who it was. He didn’t answer the call. Shortly afterwards a text arrived. “Please may I see you. When?”

He typed his reply, - a single word, “Never”.  But he couldn’t send it. He couldn’t lie, not even to himself. Not even when he needed to. Not even when his life depended on it. And it felt as though it did. He closed his eyes and imagined the contents of his heart.

_teeming with life  
_ _circular shoals of sardines  
_ _predators with enormous mouths  
_ _deaths without notices  
_ _births that are eaten alive  
_ _bright colours denoting the hope of life  
_ _with toxic camouflage  
_ _yellow and red  
_ _and rocks turning to sand  
_ _in the endless movement of time  
_ _and my tail and fins propelling me in the dark_

_to where our bed is an ocean  
_ _our ceiling a sky_

He wrote the word, “Now.” He sent the word to him.

 

 


End file.
